A new organization exists that hopefully will bring pressure to bear on the UN's initiative of Responsibility to Protect.

http://www.responsibilitytoprotect.org/

One way or another, R2P, to have teeth, will have to be decoupled from UNSC, otherwise it's just another nice thought and pretty platform for endless blather.

The U.N. did not really fail Syria. The U.S. pushed plan for Syria failed, but that failure was good for the Syrian people. If the U.S. pushed U.N. Resolution that failed at the U.N. Security Council was put for vote an the U.N. General Assembly, in which 193 states can vote on an issue presented, more than 100 would have voted against it. When Hillary Clinton calls the U.N. Security Council (UNSC) failure to agree on an acceptable plan for Syria "a travesty," therefore, the world just doesn't buy it! Instead, the world sees a skewed U.S. effort to make up for the recent losses of its puppet regimes in Tunisia and Egypt by turning the Arab Spring of Syria on its head! And if it could be successful, the U.S. could score a big victory on its efforts to wean Syria out of Iran's influence, to cut off its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and to close the Russian naval base in the Mediterranean Sea.

Yes, the U.S. failure at the UNSC to demand the overthrow of Bashar Assad scuttles the U.S. and Israeli insidious plans for re-mapping the Middle East, but the scuttling is just fine for the majority of Syrians. The majority of Syrians support the regime, and they chaff at the U.S. approval of Israel's occupation of the Golan Heights, and for building a dam on the Golan Heights to steal water and deprive Syria and Jordan from badly needed water resources. (Israeli newspaper Haaretz, November 26, 2006) Now the U.S. pushes the "unknowns and the nobodies" in the fractious and infighting bands of the Syrian opposition as "the new government of Syria!" Even the former U.S. Undersecretary of State Richard Murphy admitted yesterday that there is suspicion on who the Syrian opposition is, or whom they represent. (Al Jazeera, February 4, 2012).

The Syrian Spring started well, and deserved full support. But when it was highjacked by individuals who became pawns of foreign powers, they are not Arab Spring bearers anymore! I don't have any doubt that social changes are coming to Syria, but I don't see any Western stooges taking over control of Syria. Nikos Retsos, retired professor

I'm a bit surprised there was ever any doubt about Russia's veto.

R2P can far too easily be used to justify a great number of actions that would be contrary to the spirit of the UN Charter if push comes to shove. Yes, the Russians and the Chinese vetoed the Syrian resolution. But what did we expect? Taking away the veto power, as Rosco pointed out on the Multilateralist blog, is simply a no-go. The alternative to the UNSC is... well, nothing. I personally despise the veto, but it's a method for keeping the P5 on board.

Interestingly, Mark used Kosovo as an example of an illegitimate action within the same sentence with Iraq. Kosovo was a legitimate operation in the eyes of international community, but Iraq was far from in any kind of legitimacy.

I would have expected Mark to give examples from Israeli-Palestinian conflict and consistent US vetoes regarding to any criticism to Israel and connect this to UN Security Council's impractical status.

And people thought the Arab League investigations were going to be the real hang up in stopping this megalomaniac. I love that people also thought China and Russia would at least remain neutral on Syria. Crazy loves company; those countries are three little peas in a pod. I guess I hope for too much when I say that maybe this will signal the death knell of Security Council permanent member veto power.

I am not surprised. Russia and China are more interested in their arms trade with Syria and other dictatorships than with human rights, freedom, and democracy.

Such nonsense.

A UNSC resolution would not have "stopped the killing", nor would it have induced Assad to hand over power to anyone.

How could it?
Why should he?

The only people who are claiming that this resolution would have been effective are the same people who claimed that a UNSC resolution on Israel/Palestine wouldn't change anything and therefore must be vetoed.

Honestly, the hypocrisy is nauseating.

This is very simple: the USA and its allies pushed through a resolution on Libya, and both Russia and China were tricked into abstaining from that vote.

NATO then proceded to do exactly what they said they wouldn't do i.e. use that resolution to justify a military intervention in a civil war in support of one side over the other.

Once bitten, twice shy.

If the USA had wanted Russia and China to get onboard then maybe - juuuuuust maybe - they should look back at that little sleight-of-hand and ask themselves just how stupid they think Putin really is.

Answer: he so stupid that he'll make the same mistake twice.

Quote: I am not surprised. Russia and China are more interested in their arms trade with Syria and other dictatorships than with human rights, freedom, and democracy.

from MICHAELGERALDPDEALINO,

- You are dead wrong when you stated that China had arms deal w/ Syria, it is only the Russian that had deal w/ Syria.

China don't have any real interest in Syria, nonwhatsoever.

Granted China has very dismal human rights record.

In this case, China simply went along w/ Russia for whatever geopoliticAL reason and content to ride in Russian coattail for now.

Far contrary to whatever China bashers that China is the greatest single evil present on this planet,

Go Take on Russia If you got any ball at ALL!!!!!

These who malign China will have to pay eventually, it is all personal fron now on

I don't think the main point is that a UN Security Council resolution would make a difference in giving a boost to an effort towards cease fire. What you are saying is that RUSSIAN and CHINESE votes for the resolution would have added strength. This would have signaled a change in those two countries' position. And that is the only thing that matters: Assad would see 'allies' peeling off.

But what would the resolution have done? It was watered down to entice Russia and China, and the NSC already rejects foreign military intervention. All the supporters of the resistance will continue that support and do whatever they would have done with a SC resolution as without one.

Rice's crocodile tears claiming the Russian veto 'outrageous' are really silly and amateurish on this one. For better or worse, the UN was founded on the principle that no state has the right to interfere with another. The reason? That type of interference led to carnage in WW1 and WW2, thanks to all-out war among Western nations. Again for better or worse, Russian and China claimed that principle for their actions.

The US is making this a bigger 'set-back' than it is. The State Department is just so dam pissed-off and doesn't know what else to do.

This was no surprise and barely newsworthy. The UN is about as dysfunctional and polarized these days as the U.S. Congress. Indeed, it is a waste of American taxpayer money. We already give out billions in aid to countries with populations that generally despise us, why do we need to contribute to the UN? The UN is the definition of insanity, i.e. doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. China and Russia will never agree with Europe and the US on sanctions. And don't even get me started on peacekeeping missions. Doesn't anyone understand that to keep the peace, there actually has to be peace to begin with? You can't send in the blue helmets to a warzone with no license to kill and expect them to accomplish security, much less peace. Enough is enough. Dismantle the UN before they enact this absurd world poverty tax, which will end up being some huge embezzelement scandal similar to the Iraq Oil for Food program.

The Syrian people want to get rid of dictatorship and a brutal regime, but not to have it replaced by a potentially more brutal foreign-installed puppet regime. FP is sinking very, very low by spinning the Western camp's lie that it is the UN that is failing Syria. It was NATO and the usual imperialists of the UNSC that thoroughly discredited NATO by abusing the terms of UNSC REsolution 1973, which authorised only the imposition of a no-fly zone, to effect regime change without any restraint on the commission of war crimes to achieve that objective.

Russia and China have allowed their own paranoia about self-generated internal political unrest to put themselves in a position to be manipulated by the regime in Damascus. Their veto of the UN Resolution presents, in Technicolor, a picture of governments standing up for the right to gun down unarmed political protesters in cold blood.

Having said that....the leadership of at least three western countries needs to be more honest with itself and with Western publics about very recent history. The Russian government is not wrong to observe that the Western attack against the former Libyan government was justified in naked, promiscuous bad faith as a humanitarian "responsibility to protect" intervention. It was actually an intervention directed at overthrowing the Libyan government.

The Western attack on Libya was accompanied by a great deal of rhetoric about a moral responsibility to prevent the death of thousands. It made possible a months-long civil war that resulted in the death of thousands. Finally, the Western attack on Libya was proclaimed as a triumphant new chapter in The Narrative of the Arab Spring, in which liberating political change was being brought about by the Arabs themselves -- notwithstanding the large amounts of American ordnance delivered by American aircraft that made this liberating political change possible.

The amount of public deception, and self-deception, on the part of the Obama administration and the British and French governments with respect to Libya in 2011 plays its part in world attitudes toward the Syria policy of those governments now. It is not a good enough reason for either Beijing or Moscow to have invested their prestige in a course that serves no Chinese or Russian national interest -- indeed, Russia appears to be making the same mistake it has so often in the past, trying to play the great power when its resources do not permit this. Everything it has invested in Syria for decades will be lost if the Assad regime falls, as it is likely to do eventually. But Western governments' outrage is expressed without any recognition that the last great triumph of humanitarian intervention wasn't all that great and had a dubious relationship to humanitarianism.

One more thing: the self-deception on the part of Western governments is probably more damaging in the long run than the public bad faith over Libya last year, or the overwrought rhetoric covering the lack of good options on Syria today. The response of the Assad government to political protest is exactly, to the last detail, what might have been expected from an Arab government with a strong army facing a challenge to its legitimacy. For all the airy academic talk about new or evolving international norms, violence by the state aimed in the direction of internal threats has been a notable feature of Arab political culture for a very long time, and in Syria more than in most places.

Not only Western governments but Western academics want very much to believe that this isn't true, or that it doesn't matter, or that we shouldn't take it into account because the Arab countries are not unique in their traditional approach to dissent. They have a responsibility to base policy and analysis on something more substantial than what they would like to be true, but they are not doing it -- not in public, anyway.

This emotional devotion to a narrative will lead to policy mistakes. It has already led the Obama administration to declare the Egyptian revolution last year, in effect, Mission Accomplished -- allowing it to turn its attention to several other Arab countries last year while the military in the only Arab country that really matters solidified its position. And I fear it will lead Western governments to assume that Mission Accomplished in Syria will be the fall of the Assad regime, when in fact this is likely to produce a fraught situation between Syria's Sunni Arabs and the minorities hitherto protected by the Syrian Baathists.

If Richard Holbrooke were still alive, he would recognize that Syria is not Bosnia -- withdrawal or overthrow of the bad guys in Damascus, desirable or not in the long term, will create serious problems with serious consequences. His less sophisticated former principals in the White House and State Department insist on presenting Syria as a simple morality play, as they did Libya last year. They end up being surprised when not everyone accepts what they say at face value now, and they are likely to be surprised by what happens in Syria later.

Clearly this is a highly contentious issue and a number of good arguments have been made on the subject. However, there are scant comments on the archaic composition of the security council, a veritable old boys club, to say nothing of two very undemocratic countries in the midst of democracies.

There has been much foot- dragging by all its members to keep other democracies out of the exclusive club, never mind that almost all of the members are in its economic and political decline. But the most outrageous aspect is that the security council has two members, i.e, Russia and China that have no right to sit in the high council. The US has to take its share of the blame for perpetuating this sham. It never showed real leadership in wanting to reform an outdated organization.

Recent events have proved once again that as long as Russia and China occupy council seats, unanimous and principled agreement is near impossible. Reform is desperately and urgently required to reflect current realities.

The world sees a skewed U.S. effort to make up for the recent losses of its puppet regimes in Tunisia and Egypt by turning the Arab Spring of Syria on its head! And if it could be successful, the U.S. could score a big victory on its efforts to wean bet365 bonus Syria out of Iran's influence, to cut off its support for Hezbollah and Hamas, and to close the Russian naval base in the Mediterranean Sea.